Nevada’s ballot ‘curing’ process fuels misleading claims

As election workers continued to count votes in the swing state of Nevada, some social media users claimed thousands of mail-in ballots were being discarded for signature problems.

A Nov. 5 Threads post said, "In Nevada, the GOP is succeeding in throwing out the votes of thousands of young people."

"If you're in Clark or Washoe county, answer your phone tonight," the post continued. "It may be election officials, calling to cure the defect in your mailed-in ballot."

(Screenshot from Threads)

Another Threads post shared the same message. These posts were flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)

But Nevadans who voted by mail in this election shouldn’t panic. Ballots marked as needing signature verification weren’t being thrown out, and there’s still time to fix any ballot problems, the secretary of state’s office said.

Nevada law allows voters to "cure" or resolve any problems with a signature on a mail ballot return envelope, such as a missing or mismatched signature. Nevadans have until 5 p.m. PST on Nov. 12 to cure their ballots, the secretary of state’s website said.

We didn’t find that this curing process was a Republican-led effort. Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar is a Democrat.

In 2021, Democratic lawmakers in Nevada passed a law to send every active voter in the state a mail-in ballot for all future elections starting in 2022. (Nevadans can still opt-out and vote in person early or on Election Day.) This law also instructed election officials on how to verify ballot signatures and established a curing process for voters.

As of Nov. 8, the secretary of state’s website said 13,030 mail ballots, or 1.9% of all returned ballots in Nevada, needed signature cures. Of these mail ballots, 11,039 belong to voters in Clark County, the state’s most populous county. Washoe County had the next highest number, with 1,206 mail ballots needing signature cures.

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Nevada election officials are contacting the voters by mail, phone and email who needed to cure their ballots. Voters can also check the secretary of state’s website themselves to see whether their ballot needs to be fixed. Once these ballots are cured, they can be counted.

Any ballots that aren’t cured will not be counted.

Clark County Registrar of Voters Lorena Portillo said during a Nov. 6 press briefing that the mail ballot signature cure process is "very quick."

"Once we get that phone call, the voter provides pertinent personal information that we can use to verify their identity, and then we can proceed. It doesn’t take long," Portillo said.

Secretary of State Aguilar expressed concerns on the morning of Election Day about young voters not having their mail ballot signatures match their driver’s license signatures. He told The New York Times that "young people don’t have signatures these days."

Later in the day on Nov. 5, Aguilar said in a statement that "the need for signature cure goes beyond youth." He said that older voters may sign their names differently throughout their lives and recently married voters may not have updated their name on their voter registration.

"Since the passage of Automatic Voter Registration, more Nevadans than ever sign their names on digital screens that may look different than their pen-to-paper signatures," Aguilar said.

In the 2022 general election, 5,979 ballots needing signature verification were not counted because they weren’t cured. In the 2020 general election, 2,887 ballots weren’t counted because of signature problems, according to data from the secretary of state.

A Threads post warned, "In Nevada, the GOP is succeeding in throwing out the votes of thousands of young people."

Some Nevadans’ votes will not be counted if their ballots are not "cured" by the deadline, but this is not because the state or the Republican Party are "throwing out" their votes. Nevada law requires mail-in ballots contain verified signatures; ballots with missing or mismatched signatures, therefore, will not be included in the final count.

The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate it Mostly False.